


The Lie

by FranklyFrazzled



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:32:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FranklyFrazzled/pseuds/FranklyFrazzled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They grow up and fall in love, as we all must.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lie

The lie starts like this:

 

“Why do you have so much paper?” Steven asks pulling a few notebooks out of Xabi’s over-night bag. The Spaniard looks back at him for a long moment, trying to think of a good way to explain.

“I’m writing a book,” he finally says when he realizes the truth is far too complicated for him to explain and still end up looking sane.

It’s 2004 and this is the first time Steven and Xabi room together. Essentially, it’s the first time they meet. Period. They’re both sixteen and more interested in the school’s new football pitch then their roommate.

Steven puts the notebooks back and gives his roommate a look. Xabi can’t tell if he’s silently mocking him or impressed. He worries for a moment that he thinks he’s showing off but then they go to practice and he forgets anyone ever saw his notebooks to begin with.

 

The truth:

 

Xabi wants to write a book. He feels like it is something he might be good at if the right mood ever hit him. He doesn’t particularly have a lot to say but people were always telling him that everyone has a story to tell. He figures it is only a matter of time until his comes to him. He always keeps a few notebooks and a pen around him at all times. When his story finally hits, he is sure it is going to flow out of him like Niagara Falls. He likes to be prepared.

 

The lie has a consequence:

 

Steven thinks Xabi was showing off. There he is: good-looking, Spanish, most likely has better marks then himself, and he is writing a damn novella. There has to have been enough paper in that bag to finish the rest of his coursework for the next three years and maybe some University years as well. He is pretentious and Steven decides that he would share a room with him but wouldn’t like him.

At football practice they’re both midfield and Steven runs extra fast and kicks the ball extra hard just to show Xabi that he’s good at something too. But then they link up. Something happens and the ball goes from Xabi’s feet to his own. It feels like magic. When it’s over, Steven decides he still hates him, even if his heart isn’t really into it anymore.

 

The lie remembered:

 

They’re drunk. Wasted, locked in their dorm with nothing but expensive looking glass bottles and each other. The year is half-way over and this is the first time they really had a chance to bond outside the team. Xabi likes the library, Steven the cafeteria. Their room remains empty at almost all times with the exception of night when they both sleep peacefully in their side-by-side beds.

It’s not like one of them went to the other and said, “We haven’t really had a chance to get to know each other. Let’s get roaringly drunk.” No. Xabi receives a care package from home. His mother’s name is forged but he doesn’t mention it when he picks up the crate from the Dean’s office a little before lights out.

Steven’s already in bed, looking over his last math test (78%, much better than last time, his place on the team is secure) when Xabi enters the room with the large wooden box. He gives it a good once over before asking his roommate, “What’s that?”

Xabi shrugs, not yet setting it down. “Wanna find out?” he asks back carefully. It’s a bit heavy so when Steven nods and motions for him to set it down on the end of his bed, he does so without hesitation.

“You need a crowbar for something like this,” Steven notes in exasperation after awhile of studying the box.

“What about this?” Xabi offers, pulling a croquet mallet out from under his bed. “Pepe, from the team,” he explains when Steven only stares blankly at him, “was thinking about quitting football for croquet a few weeks ago.”

“So you stole it and hid it under your bed?” There’s no accusation in his voice, only the slight possibility that he’d misjudged the boy opposite him when they first met.

“He’s a good keeper. It’s come in handy, no?” Xabi shrugs again as he passes him the mallet. They look each other in the eye and pause before coming to a silent agreement. Steven cracks the entire side of the crate off in one barbaric swing. In that moment, their eyes seem to know more than the rest of their bodies do (except maybe their nerves because something feels right about this. Xabi thinks the destruction of the crate would make a great metaphor for something but he isn’t quite sure what it is. His story still hasn’t come to him but looking at Steven, he feels closer than he’s ever felt before. It’s both exhilarating and terrifying so he chooses to ignore it and focus on the now).

The insides of the box spill out onto Steven’s bed and there’s a lot of packaging material and a note written in messy Spanish. While Xabi reads, Steven explores deeper until he strikes gold. Whiskey, tequila, vodka, and more! He’s never seen a care package quite like this before but isn’t one to complain.

Xabi throws the note on the bed laughing. “My brothers,” he says simply with a huge smile on his face. Steven doesn’t think he’s ever seen him smile before. He was always one of the more reserved, professional guys on the pitch. Off of it, Steven simply paid too little attention to him to have noticed such things. He looks nice when his eyes crinkle and he shows off his teeth. Steven doesn’t really understand the funny part (he opted to take French instead of Spanish so the note was nothing more than scribbles on a page to him) but he does understand that there’s far too much alcohol on his bed to go untouched.

“What do you say to a drink to your brothers for knowing exactly what to get a guy?” he asks and Xabi nods happily, unscrewing the top of the vodka bottle while Steven went for something with a strange Spanish label. They quickly get smashed: testing turns to tasting which turns to finishing entire bottles at unhealthy rates.

They laugh and share stories, talking more in one night than they have in the past four months. Xabi, it turns out, is a down to Earth guy with some of the best anecdotes Steven has ever heard. Steven in turn is witty and could convincingly impersonate any teacher he wanted at will.

Around 3 am they both collapse, Steven half under his bed and Xabi half on top of it. Their loud laughter fades into a content silence. They’re both smiling despite being on the verge of consciousness.

“Hey Xabs?” Steven calls out, unsure if what he was looking at peering over the bed was his roommates face or foot. When it calls back, “Hmmm?” he figures it has to be his head and continues. “What kind of book are you writing in all your notebooks?”

The question seems to slightly sober the Spaniard. “What?”

“What kind of book are you writing? I mean, what’s it about?”

Xabi tries to detect any sense of mockery in Steven’s voice but all he can hear is sincere curiosity. It barely takes him a moment, even in his inebriated state, to say, “Friendship. Definitely friendship.”

Steven nods in the dark and hums what must be his approval. They fall asleep like that and something finally clicks into place between them like when they’re playing football. They link up, and from then on, it’s magic.

 

The lie spreads:

 

Fall of 2005 Xabi gets off the plane and goes to school with a smile on his face from a vacation well spent. He feels taller, older, wiser, and ready to tackle another year of essays and exams. He feels ready to tackle another year of football and friends.

He goes to his new room and begins to settle in. He puts his clothe in the top two drawers and chooses the desk and bed nearest to the window. Since he got to the room first, it was only right that he got first pick of everything.

Steven comes bursting into the room not a moment after he has already finished unpacking completely. “No fair! I had to drive all the way out here. Do you know how far away I live from this place?” the Scouser moaned seeing that he was stuck with the bed by the door.

“Do you know how far away I live?” Xabi counters with a playful smile. “Plus, last year you made me sleep by the door. It’s only fair we trade.”

“If I’d known there would be trading I wouldn’t have requested you to be my roommate this year,” Steven huffs, tossing his suitcase onto his new bed. Then he smiles and launches himself at Xabi while proceeding to ruffle his hair and proclaim that he missed him over the summer. Xabi grins and pushes him away, calling him a sap.

That night they go to a party one of the local boys was throwing. During the night, they get separated, each of them entertaining different groups of friends but neither really mind. There’ll be enough time for them to get caught up back in the room. (And there was a lot to catch up on. Steven had slept with a girl for the first time. She was on vacation from Madrid, a city he knew Xabi wasn’t from, but she pronounced his name just like his friend and it had sent shivers down his spine. Xabi had gotten a job at his home city’s football stadium. He got to meet some of the players even, despite being the off season. He got Steven an autograph from one of his favorites.)

Around eleven Xabi goes to find his friend so they won’t miss summer curfew and be locked out of the dorms. It takes him a long time of searching the crowded house before he hears the right familiar voice.

“My roommate, you guys know Xabi,” Steven says in continuation of a subject someone else has brought up and Xabi freezes in place, just out of sight, so he can hear what is being said about him. “He’s gonna be some hot-shot writer. He’s already writing a book, and a good one at that!” There are general murmurs of appreciation from his conversational partners. Something sits wrong in Xabi’s stomach but he can’t quite place the reason. He collects Steven and they leave together.

It bothers him the entire way back to school and even after he’s gone to bed. Around 3 am it finally hits him in their perfectly silent room (save for a certain Englishman’s heavy breathing). Steven had sounded proud. Of him. Of his non-existent book.

A wave of nausea comes over him. More than anything in the world, Xabi doesn’t want to let Steven down.

 

The lie infiltrates reality:

 

They’re no longer roommates but Steven and Xabi end up going to the same University. They remain friends despite busy schedules that keep them on opposite ends of campus. Steven is going into sports medicine and physical therapy. Xabi doesn’t tell him he’s going into business because he wants to but rather because his father wants him to. (He hides behind the ominous, shadowy image that pops into Steven’s head whenever he thinks of Señor Alonso despite the guilt he feels for building his kind, well-meaning father up to his friend as a tyrant.)

He now carries around an empty notebook with him everywhere he goes just in case. He feels the pressure to write something every time he sees Steven and his pitying eyes. The pressure builds and builds until one day Xabi can’t take it anymore.

They’ve been hanging out in Steven’s room. All their other friends have either gone home or to another party. It’s just the two of them, like old times. Only not. Because in the old times, Steven would never be scolding his friend about following his own path and doing what he wants with his life.

“Steven,” Xabi protests, “I want to go into business. Really.”

“Really?” Steven asks, giving him a look which says: you are so full of shit. “I know you too well and I know you don’t want business.”

Something grips at Xabi. The words “I know you”. They cause an immense feeling of sadness because after everything, it really means that Steven doesn’t know him at all, doesn’t it?

“Then what do I want?” he asks fearfully. He’s afraid of the answer he knows he’s going to receive.

“A writer of course!” Xabi’s blood goes cold. His mouth is dry. He keeps taking sips from his drink but nothing helps. “I mean look, you’ve even got that silly notebook with you now.” Steven’s voice is honest and well-meaning but Xabi wishes he would just stop. “That’s clearly where your heart is and what you’re good at.”

His head is spinning. Where his heart is? He absently rubs his chest over the quickly beating organ. His heart is here, with Steven. That’s what this stupid mess has been about from the beginning, hasn’t it? “How do you know?”

Steven pauses. “Know what?”

“That I am good at writing? I’ve never shown you anything.”

“It goes without saying! People can tell by the way you talk. Articulate as fuck! Plus anyone who writes as much as you has got to be good.” He nudges Xabi playfully in the side.

Xabi isn’t sure what causes him to do it but he throws the notebook on Steven’s lap and takes a last bitter swig from his beer. “Read something; tell me how you like it.” He feels heart broken and lonely. This wasn’t how everything was supposed to be.

Steven is surprised but doesn’t hesitate before picking the notebook up. It feels slightly like trespassing to open it but Xabi had just given him permission…

“It’s empty. Hey Xabs, the book is empty.” He looks questioningly at his friend but Xabi is gone. He put on his coat and was already out the door. He leaves Steven and his book of nothing behind and just walks. He’s done with it all. He doesn’t expect Steven to chase him into the hall, calling for him to wait up.

He doesn’t stop but Steven catches him, cuts his escape short with a hand on his shoulder. Xabi refuses to meet his eyes, just stares at the brown molding on the wall, noting how it clashed with the carpet.

Steven is at a loss. His hand stays on his friend’s shoulder but he can’t think of anything to say. “Fuck it,” he murmurs to himself and pushes Xabi against the wall and uses his surprise to his advantage and kisses him.

Within a few seconds, Xabi gives in and kisses him back.

 

The lie uncovered destroys:

 

It’s 2008. Things have been… good. Steven and Xabi, they aren’t together, but they’re not really apart either. They’re good friends who kiss on drunken occasion and don’t let it cause any weirdness between them. Xabi wants more. So does Steven. They don’t talk about it and things remain the same.

The word love is as taboo as talking about Xabi’s book. He put away his notebooks once and for all and they put it behind them. Until Steven meets someone who really is writing a book. His name is Fernando and he lets Steven read finished chapters to see what he thinks. He’s Spanish and the way he pronounces his name is enthralling. They get together and start a real relationship. Steven is so enraptured by a freckled face and ink stained hands that he forgets Xabi completely.

Xabi is hurt. Xabi is unbearably sad. Xabi accepts an invitation from the attractive student aide in his marketing class to check out a University in Spain with him. His name is Íker and he doesn’t sweep him off of his feet but the trip does. Xabi agrees to transfer with him come next semester. He decides his unhappiness of late must mean he’s overstayed his welcome in England. It’s about time for him to return home.

He’s gotten so used to barely seeing Steven anymore due to Fernando that he almost forgets to tell him he’s moving back to Spain. His bags are packed on he’s on his way to meet the taxi that will take him to the airport when he remembers. The image of Steven asking him to stay and be with him floats through his mind. It makes him sick at himself remembering Fernando and he leaves without saying anything. It’s better this way, he tells himself.

Steven doesn’t find out until a week after it’s too late and is more hurt than either of them would have imagined. He thinks back to when they first met and he hated a certain Xabi Alonso. He pretends they never became friends and that he’s hated him all this time. He sleeps with an empty notebook under his pillow. Fernando doesn’t ask. Some things are better left alone.

 

The lie’s ultimate damage:

 

Steven gets a job at Anfield. He helps take care of the reserve players but has ambition to one day help treat the injured first teamers. He’ll probably make it there soon. He has a passion for Liverpool and the knowledge needed to go far in the world of sports medicine. He’s exactly where he wishes to be in his career; there are many older and more experienced men would kill for his job. The rest of his life, on the other hand, is more complex.

He and Fernando are having problems. Ever since Nando got his first book published, things have gone downhill. The pressure of coming up with a second book is consuming. The marginal success of the first weighs heavy on their relationship. Steven silently accuses him of ruining everything with his quest for literary stardom. This is not entirely true. Things have been going downhill ever since Xabi left but Steven is too stubborn to admit the truth. His stubbornness is the only thing keeping him and Fernando together.

In Spain Xabi is having an affair with a lovely London based woman. She reminds him nothing of Steven; even the way she pronounces his name is different. He has a good job that he likes and feels like he will be able to progress in over time. Being able to express himself in Spanish for average, everyday conversations and formalities is also a delight he had forgotten completely about. A part of him says, “Why not just forget English all together and memorize the numbers for next quarter? It’d be a more useful use of brainpower.”

He feels fine without Steven. He feels fine for the first time in years not thinking about blue eyes and that demanding presence the Englishman had developed when they played ball together at school. He says he’s fine and yet Xabi doesn’t follow football anymore. He says he’s too busy but that’s not true. No one is too busy for football.

He knows it is only a matter of time before his London girl leaves him and Spain behind and that he will be alone. He knows this and yet does nothing about it.

 

The lie becomes a truth:

 

It’s 2010. Steven and Xabi have known each other for six years. They have not seen each other in two. They think about each other a minimum of once a day. (Steven usually when he has his tea and Xabi when he drives home from work.)They are as much in love with each other as any two people can be and yet miles apart.

Steven is somehow still with Fernando despite the Spaniard’s quest for a third book destroying the public façade that they were alright. They have both been cheating on each other for a little over a year. Xabi was at a café, suddenly moved to purchase milk instead of coffee, when he saw Íker for the first time in over a year. They get together despite knowing that the other is actively in love with someone else. They are more like good friends who exclusively fuck each other. Content but not happy.

It is Íker, the man who took Xabi away from England and Steven, who eventually sets him on the path to his return. He finds the empty notebooks, now long forgotten, hidden in the confines of Xabi’s home. “Why do you have so much paper?”

Xabi frowns with remembrance. “I thought I had a story to tell.”

“And now?”

“They are empty. I have nothing.” He shrugs. There is both defeat and the unwillingness to allow himself to feel over this in his voice.

Íker kisses his temple and places a hand on his shoulder. “In the end, it is men like us who are the only ones with stories worth telling.” He nods to two hardcover books on Xabi’s desk. The name FERNANDO TORRES is stunningly clear on the spine of both. “You have more than you know.”

He leaves Xabi alone in a room with his past and it finally happens. The words fall out of him, sometimes faster than his hand can commit them to paper. He ends up with sentences missing subjects and misconjugated verbs but he can’t stop to fix these petty mistakes. It’s only once he is done and the notebooks are filled does he notice that he wrote it all in English. He understands what he has to do.

It’s winter when he comes back to England. He waits for Steven in the parking lot in a new black coat with nothing but a freshly typed manuscript and a beating heart. He could be waiting inside, in the warmth, but he hasn’t been this cold in years and both fear and nostalgia keep him in place.

Steven is one of the last people to leave on a normal workday. He looks tired and shocked. He is at a loss for words but he doesn’t need them now that Xabi has written down enough for the both of them.

“I had this feeling,” Xabi says, “that I would disappear and cease to exist to you if I didn’t do anything. I felt like I was fading from the world and needed something to cement myself to it. To you.”

“What have you got there?” Steven asks. His voice is gruff. His throat has swelled. He is a man who can no longer register emotion or any other kind of feeling for that matter.

“I wrote a book.”

“What’s it about?”

Xabi smiles for the first time, softly, but it’s there. The majestic upturn of the ends of his lips. “Friendship,” he says. “It’s a story about two friends.”

“Go on.” Steven is struggling. Their eyes have met and can’t be parted.

“They grow up and fall in love; it is something we all must do.” Xabi sounds sweetly reminiscent. “They get hurt, unfortunately, and run to opposite ends of the Earth in their football cleats.” Steven is choking. Breathing has become a task too complex. “They try to live apart and forget what it’s like to run next to each other on freshly mowed grass.” Xabi is getting closer. The stack of papers in his hands, being held like an offering, should look comical but it’s Xabi so it is anything but. “Then one day they meet again and there’s-”

“Magic. Always magic.” Xabi is so close that when Steven speaks, their lips brush together. They breathe each other in, close their eyes, and then simply just are. Steven and Xabi. They link up and something just clicks. Magic.


End file.
